REMEMBER JUST A FEW YEARS AGO, WHEN “PEAK OIL” WAS A THING, AND ANYONE WHO DOUBTED IT WAS A BIG-OIL-FUNDED “DENIER?” Oil Supply Reaches High Water Mark.

“Peak oil” concerns seem like something out of the distant past at this point, as today’s discussion of the global oil market centers on the seemingly ever-growing supply of crude. . . .

In fact, the world has so much oil that abundance is actually becoming a logistical problem: We’re not sure where to stash all the crude sloshing around the global market. Most onshore storage sites are full-up at this point, so producers have taken to offloading their cargo onto tankers and anchoring the ships off the coasts of major oil ports. Houston, for example, had some 41 tankers idling outside its port last week. . . .

Brent crude is currently trading below $44 per barrel, and America’s West Texas Intermediate benchmark is barely above $40. When we look at the supply side of the market, it’s not hard to see why prices have fallen so dramatically, and, with demand unlikely to rise enough to offset this glut, prices seem set to stay a bargain for the foreseeable future. Producers like U.S. shale firms and OPEC’s petrostates will be discouraged by this news, but consumers, at least, ought to be delighted.

Indeed.